Jael Ovalle currently works as Program Manager, Parent Education for the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE). She co-designed and implemented the Title I Parent Education and Consultation Program. It is an overhaul of LACOEs’ models for parental engagement. The program is the first and only in the nation to reach out to the families of incarcerated youth, homeless students and foster children. Most recently, she brought to LACOE the First Parent Conference, an event to empower families to become effective partners in their young one’s education, despite their students’ social, economic, and academic history- or incarceration. Jael has been at the center of major reform on parent engagement in Los Angeles. She worked with community partners, bargaining units, district officials, families and students to support the passage of the historic Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education Resolution “Parents As Equal Partners” in 2010, collaborated in the creation of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, to guide the parent involvement work of school districts, charter schools and community-based organizations that advocate for parental engagement in education in Los Angeles. Jael has participated in extensive training on the Dr. Joyce Epstein’s Typology for Parental Engagement, conducted by Dr. Epstein’s herself, and possess extensive knowledge of the Parent Action Teams model by the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University and the research that guides school district's practices for parental engagement in the nation. Jael has Master’s Degree in Public Administration, with a specialization in Leadership. She is an expert in policy writing, strategic planning, budget alignment, and understands profoundly the political environment in which the work of educating students and providing families with authentic opportunities for learning must be carried out. She has studied the theories and practices of leadership in the public sector; and believes that the leader needs the skill of a planner and organizer, a motivator, a diplomat, a negotiator, a communicator and a collaborator.